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a. >> host: hello, this is "communicators" on location. we are talking to policymakers here at ces. this is "communicators" on c-span from las vegas. and now joining us today on "communicators" from ces international show in las vegas we want to introduce you to chris riley with mozilla. mr. chris riley what is mozilla? >> guest: and is a uniquely his structure corporation. we are known for open source software products, the firefox web browser and firefox mobile phone, but we are structured differently in the operations side of mozilla is owned by the

5013-c. at the end of the day our major decisions are driven by our mission and our mission is to advance this. and there was a donation that started in with money that started the original foundation and that later became mozilla fire fox. >> host: so this is something that you are best known for. how do you make your money? >> guest: we make our money through licensing deals, but the bulk of the money comes from search licensing. so when you install to the first time there is the default provider of search that is their. so you go into the search bar and you enter your search query and that takes you to the specific default search engine. for many years that engine was google. and we announced that our

agreement with google had expired, we were talking about finding a new agreement with them and we were having very good conversations with them and also talking to yahoo! and we had a choice at the end of the day between having a new agreement with google or one with yahoo and so we chose to go with yahoo! how smart what is your >> host: what is your education? >> guest: i got a doctorate and i spent three years at a nonprofit in washington dc called free press, known probably too many years by the show. then spent a little under two years at the u.s. department of state working on internet freedom and then came to mozilla >> host: what is your philosophy when it comes to the internet? >> guest: you know, at the end of the day my original philosophy is the belief that the internet is an amazing place and that a big part of that is

that you can have a boon to consumers, the value of the market, and i've worked on this as a touchstone. copyrights censorship and all of that as well. >> host: what is the mozilla position on net neutrality. >> guest: mozilla has been a staunch supporter of many net neutrality's for many years and we have weighed in on this back in 2009 and 2010 cycles and internet rules and we have engaged in debate much more in the past year in consideration of it. we believe at the end of the day that the internet needs strong and enforceable and effective roles to protect net neutrality for the users and developers on the web. and those need to include nondiscrimination, subject to reasonable management and they need to be effectively

enforceable. >> guest: it is the status quo of the day? >> guest: yes, it is the status quo. a lot of times we talk about preserving status quo. if we don't have that in place there are lots of reasons about will be the role of the future. and instead the world will evolve towards different independent entities for different providers and different applications and different services. so these safeguards although they won't have a significant change on the way the internet operates today, will nevertheless preserve the things that we love about the internet going forward. >> host: chris riley, you came up with a proposal of an alteration of the title to proposals that have been out there. what was that proposal and what kind of feedback did you get? >> guest: it was an interesting proposal. we put together the communications commission and may shortly before the release

of their proposed set of rules last spring and it was a petition focus solely on the authority question. so the dc circuit handed down its decision and in that they indicated that they understood the isps and we said let's call it a separate service and let's apply the title label to that. so we broke out a separate service the offer by the isp to other providers and they were not directly connected with. we analyze that and said that we could call that a title ii service today and then build a strong net neutrality rule and throughout this point in time we have supported classification title to the net neutrality and

we provided options as well. to make sure that this wasn't just strictly between 706 but more diversity and tim also came forward with a proposal, a congressman came forward last week, aol came with a proposal we ended up being one of the first ones out of the gate to greet a diversity options which we think helps to set the baseline to get where we are today. >> host: what kind of feedback did you get from some of the sumer advocates? >> guest: we had some who were supportive and some who had concerns. most were concerns about a proposal with what is being overturned in court. our proposal finished on certain specific terms within title ii and offered this end these are places where we need to call but said the fcc can choose to interpret the statutory language

in this specific way and these are things that are always going to be testing points when a decision is being adjusted. some of our allies felt that our proposal was a bigger risk than reclassification in the sense of overturning the orders and not dividing up the service and the way that we did. and i respect the opinion and we have had many conversations about it. >> host: mr. riley, there is a strong feeling that the internet remains unadulterated in the sense of making it a title ii condition. so if the sec moves forward, what happens remapped. >> guest: i think that there will be less change than some people think if they move forward. the biggest reason for that -- the fcc has the legal authority to set aside many of the statutory requirements and regulatory precedents as it applies title ii to the world of broadband. and so some of the things in the history of title ii like ray

regulations and bungling of the network this won't be applied. so we are in the world today where we are looking at the possible reclassification that the fcc is talking about and net neutrality in saying that, you know, this is just not would have its big of an impact on the way the market is going. and i am certainly of that opinion as well. >> host: when you are at the state department, what did you work on? >> guest: i worked on internet freedom. there's a pool of money. there is money that are used for technology development, digital safety training, and other activities. usaid has another program as well, their other divisions of the government that execute this as well. i was part of the team that helps manage those trends. one way used to describe my job as an article became a couple of

years ago that said that the nsa is trying to break [inaudible] while the [inaudible] is supporting it. >> host: has this been a successful endeavor? the internet freedom initiative? >> guest: i would say it is making success and it's making progress. but yes, it is a top fight. internet freedom is very much in jeopardy on being attacked on a number of fronts all around the world and you can look at some of the freedoms that are not dealing with this in a longitudinal sense over time. internet freedom is not a great place right now from i actually think it's been a good place but in many other countries people are not free to say what they want to say online and not free to access the internet and the website they want to get to and use the applications and services. so i think we have a lot of work to do but i think we're making progress. >> host: what about the issue of "i can" been moving into it international mode?

>> guest: i think that many feel that "i can" has a good movement behind it. it it's a bit of a historical artifact more than anything else. and in fact "i can" is relatively regulated by a group of contributors. there has been a lot of talk about "i can" and its legal relationship with the united states versus some other entity. but a lot of this is just a fundamentalism. and we are moving towards government and i can transition as part of that. >> host: there is a conservative element as well. >> guest: yes, i think that that comes from where the internet is not free in the worry about international things like the international telecommunications union. the worry that some of these formal intergovernmental

processes will start to take more control over internet content and policies around internet content. in doing that, what that would do would take out of the equation the internet users in the voids for technology companies that don't have the same kind of availability as other corporations. so to many that would be a mistake because the internet is for all of us and it's by all of us and it's used by all of us and we all have an opportunity and a responsibility to be part of that and to be part of the government structure for that. and that is the way to preserve the internet and get the most out of it. >> host: or policy title is senior policy and generic. what is that? >> guest: well they said make up your own title and i said, okay, i'm a policy person i like to think that what i try to do

well. we don't have the same resources at mozilla whose names are offered in the same conversations. so that means we need to pick and choose our opportunities to have additional types of policy. and that includes things like net neutrality where we can come up with a unique voice and really sort of engineer the policy, if you will, to make it worthwhile on the internet. >> host: what about the issue of privacy? >> guest: mozilla has been very invested in privacy for a long time. we tried to address this group are product design, through our education and training and at mozilla we try to try to put privacy above are for most values. we've done a lot to try to advance that, whether it's things like this, we can remind this as well as other experiments, like protections where we are starting to export and all of this building upon years of works with others in industry trying to make do not

track an effective reality and educate users as well. there is a big gap and users understand how their information is being gathered and how they are being tracked to go about the web. it's a top problem but it's an important one for us to continue to prioritize that. >> host: where is fire fox dominant than 1% of the u.s. population uses that? >> guest: i don't off the top of my head but i think it's on the order of 70% in the u.s. some countries have a larger percentage, it's very popular in germany, germany is one of those countries and we are recognized as being -- i think the last couple of years running we have been the most trusted internet company. and so we consistently get good ratings for that. but a lot of this is also driven by communities because mozilla isn't just people that take this and work in california or worked in paris or taiwan or one of

these officers. we have communities of thousands of people that contribute code to the firefox web browser. so these people are located in active and vibrant communities in india, the philippines brazil many countries in europe as well. they help to drive not just our products but also our decisions and also how we drive awareness of our brand around the world. >> host: what is your status in china? >> guest: we have lots of interest in china and lots of designers in china. we have a perfectly good relationship there as far as i know. we have a good working relationship with them. we are in a pretty good place and we don't have data that we collect on people in different countries around the world because it's not part of our business model. some of the tensions and some of our contemporaries have run into in the countries him a we have not experienced yet. >> host: why are you here at ces? >> guest: i am here with a broadband end of event and i'm glad

to interact with great people and i'm going to some policy talks today and tomorrow. i'm going to hear the sec chairman and chairwoman speak tomorrow. here to be part part of everything and be policy proud. [inaudible] >> guest: that's a good phrase and we should work on that especially in the cyberworld. >> host: i did not mean to combine two. okay chris riley, senior policy engineer, thank you so much for being with us. >> guest: thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] >> host: now joining us on "communicators" in los las vegas we have hank

hultquist. mr. hank hultquist what is at&t, what are they to you here. >> guest: a lot of the at&t activities have to do with what we develop and sponsor which is actually a summit that is going on today. so this is part of our mobile broadband. >> host: what it comes to hacking and privacy and security issues that we read about how much of at&t's focus is preventing that? and also how does that work? >> guest: we are extremely knowledgeable and focused on security issues and at the same time we recognize that we do not have total control over that environment. so it's interesting space in that network and how it has the

ability to control security on the internet. it's very challenging. >> host: let's take that your job as vice president of federal regulatory issues. would you like to see congress enact some type of security legislation and is so what with the focus of that be? >> well, i guess i would say that there are many that are a lot more knowledgeable about security issues than i am. i am really focused in my job in things of the federal communication does and by and large these security issues cross the federal government and congress and the agency and i'm going to say that i'm not the right guy to affect question. >> host: we have plenty to talk to you about including the fact that the fcc has announced that they are they're going to be voting on net neutrality in february at their february meeting. so what would you like to see

them do? >> and feels like we have been working on the fcc for net neutrality for a long time and i think and that my view is there's a lot of consensus that we have worked upon with others with what the substance of the rule should be, protecting the openness and encouraging investment in infrastructure and i think the problem that we have now is where the net neutrality issue has gone and that it's really not focus on the rules which as i said there's a lot of consensus around what it's focused on the fcc legal authority to adopt rules and what jurisdictional theories they should use and our concern is that they are going to undo potentially a regulatory status

in terms of how they classify and regulate the internet. i would say that the fcc is going to do what it's going to do but really what we see time and again is that the fcc in this area has tried to adopt rules and has found, you know they run into problems and so congress has to step in and clearly, you know, establishes authority and i think they are kind of in a groundhog day situation with net neutrality. >> host: so from your point of view the regulatory structure that takes place now with the agreements now have been successful? >> guest: rules that the fcc adopted in 2010, which isps and others are continuing to adhere to, have been quite successful

and i do think that as i have said, they have given certainty in terms of what regulation is in at the same time they have protected openness so that the innovators that are at the edge of the network to have developers and people like that do not have any reason to be concerned about their ability. >> host: what happens if title ii becomes the rule block? >> guest: there is really a big question right now. if the fcc moves to classified internet services, i guess, a couple of things happened. one of them is that it creates uncertainty because this is a very complicated and regulatory apparatus and there's a lot of talk about how the fcc could focus on components of it. because it was really designed for monopoly network and that

can happen, but i think it will create uncertainty and that will lead to litigation and that will take time. going back to my point earlier which is ultimately the legislative body of government that has to wait in upon what the appropriate regulatory structure is for the internet. and as long as the fcc tries to put a round peg into a square hole, we are probably going to continue to talk about net neutrality. >> host: at&t has a public policy blog which has a lot of information on it. could he write that for? you write that for regulators? you write that for people that are interested in communication? >> guest: i think that you will find some extremely technical

and even wonky pieces that i think are written for very sophisticated but i think that we don't necessarily fit our blogs anyone audience and i'm sure that we always have in mind both journalists and policymakers. >> host: one of the things that we have heard about is that comcast time warner merger. but we have not heard about as much the at&t in direct tv merger. so what kind of work have you done? >> guest: in terms of the day-to-day management of the merger with the fcc i am involved in that. you know, we have made it as one more stage of public comment that will be completed shortly.

and this is what we used to value they mergers like this and i think we are looking at late march for when that will come up. but it could go on beyond that. and so at this time we are looking forward to the fcc competing with valuation toward the end of the first quarter of this year. >> host: what is your message to consumers and consumer groups? what is the benefit of this merger? >> i think that the benefits are really tremendous in a sense. these are companies that are in complementary businesses today. video, which is directv and broadband which is our mission, although we are talking about

wire and mobile broadband, these are products that consumers are buying and using together. and so bringing together these complementary assets -com,-com ma we expect to provide great new services for consumers and including what we found is a public interest statement, we explain how the merger changes with economics and so because of the synergies we are enjoying the ability as a profitable video offer and we will be able to defer broadband to millions of other locations that we couldn't have done without this merger. and so that will have a direct impact upon consumers. and many of those consumers are in rural areas where consumers have very limited broadband

choices or no broadband choices. so we are excited about the benefit but that will bring to consumers. >> host: has at&t taken a position on his? >> guest: know, they have not. we often hear that regulation and legislation is stove piped among wires -- providers or wired with wireless issues cable broadband. can there be an overarching legislation. >> i think eventually you know, basically you can see at in the titles of communication, title

ii is for communication, title iii is for wireless providers. that model cannot endure forever because we run into quickly these situations and the fcc is considering certain over-the-top video providers and if they should be classified as multi-channel video programming and basically the equivalent of a satellite company or to and that has implications. it doesn't fit that well into the statutory language and really what we should be doing eventually, eventually we will have to say because of convergence and the fact that all of these systems are going to run over the ip networks eventually we will have to come up with a more rational framework that deals with that convergence.

i'm never one to say that that can be done quickly. but even congress over the course of the last year has talked about a series about potentially drop in of the communications act and so maybe someday eventually we will actually deal with that. >> host: do think that can happen in 2014? >> guest: i think there's potential that it could happen. you shouldn't bet on legislation happening at a specific point in time, but eventually i think that will happen. >> host: at what point do you draw the line do legislate this were because the technology constantly changes. >> guest: i think it's a more

generalist approach. so i think that we need to spell out exactly how this would be done. and it's all built on a view of what the telephone network look like in 1996. so those sections have continued relevance because they were so specific without particular iterations of technology and business models and regulations and i would say they have become quite outdated. but more general kind of principles i would say guidance in terms of these issues and how to deal with things of net neutrality. and i don't think you have to be as concerned overnight.

>> host: can you please talk about the spectrum, the big options have been put out until 2016. >> guest: yes, the incentive auction is a very complicated thing that has never been tried before. and so at the same time it's really complicated. so probably won't happen since 2016 and meanwhile we do have the option which is underway and the only thing that we know about it is that it has produced much higher dividends post matt were you surprised by the numbers? >> guest: i